"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

what we could tell the authorities.
 He had political ambitions. The charge of incestual sodomy might cost him some
votes.
In retrospect I see how dangerously I underestimated his capacity for what I then
would have called evil—for what his black anger might drive him to, finding that I had
stolen the one possession he could never replace. Dodge City might have been the ends
of the earth, but it wouldn't be far enough.
Putting the tea things together, I had to wonder how much of this I would be
giving up. I wouldn't miss the society of the proper, stuffy church ladies. But I always
looked forward to the two who were chatty and fun, Eleanor and Roxanne. Would there
be enough women, proper women, in Dodge City to put together tea parties like this?
Would there even be tea?
I could afford to take a tin of my favorite, the Fortnum & Mason from London. I
looked longingly at the two tea services, but no. No room for indulgence. I would get us a
sturdy teapot and two cups in the New York station, waiting for the train west.
The tea party was excruciatingly long and slow. I had to feign interest in church
politics and minor scandal while my mind was spinning with the horror of what I'd seen
in the basement and the giddy hope of escape.
Daniel came in when the last of them left; he'd been waiting in the park across the
street. At the library he'd found a book on Kansas and had written out three pages from it.
I read it while he had some cool sweet tea and cleaned up the cookie fragments.
Then we went upstairs and each packed and repacked our small trunks. They were
awkward to handle, but Daniel improvised a lashing from two strips of leather he'd found
down in the stable, so we could lift them together, each of us taking one side. I allowed
him to bring his precious guitar. In fact, he looked jaunty and handsome in his traveling
clothes, guitar slung around his back.
I wished we could just walk out the door and leave. But the key to our freedom
resided in a safe-deposit box I couldn't open on Sunday.
So I assembled a pot roast to cook slowly and straightened up the parlor and
kitchen, which usually I would have left for the maid, even though Edward might
grumble about the mess. I wanted to treat him with the utmost solicitude, so he would
leave in the morning content and unsuspecting.
He came home late, flushed with drink and dangerously quiet. I had already given
Daniel his supper and sent him to bed, to get a good night's sleep for "school" tomorrow.
Edward toyed with his food and drank most of a bottle of wine, and then wordlessly
tramped upstairs, and into Daniel's room.
Afraid of what he might do with the boy, I followed silently a minute later and
listened at the door. They were only talking quietly. I hid in the laundry closet across the
hall, ready to use a flatiron on him if need be. But he emerged twenty minutes later and
went down to the parlor. I heard glass clinking and smelled his cigar, so I cracked
Daniel's door a bit and asked if he were well. He said he was all right and I bade him
good night; good morrow. He repeated "good morrow" so brightly I knew he wouldn't
sleep much.
If he had told me then what he was to tell me on the train the next day, I might
have gone downstairs and cracked Edward's precious brandy decanter across his skull.
He had made the child pray for forgiveness, for having tempted his father into sin, and
promise that he would put away all sinful thoughts and not mention this to anyone, or
burn in hell.
The boy did take that for what it was worth, nothing, but it renewed my fury at
Edward. That abuse of a father's authority could only undermine an impressionable